Jackson Commons invite you to Own Your Neighborhood.

Our monthly meeting will focus on new forms of community-led investment strategies that are being used to by neighborhoods to create new businesses, help grow and support existing businesses, and even create new buildings and opportunities. There is lots of new thinking and changes to SEC law that are helping neighborhoods and communities create models beyond the cooperative models or reliance on government grants to create and stabilize a community in the face of giant corporate developers and bland chain stores which take so much money out of community without investing it back in.

We’ve got a few guest speakers coming (and may have a few not listed here), so if you’ve been curious about what crowd-funding is or the difference between a REIT and an NREIT this meeting is for you! We’ll be talking simple strategies with Alley Cat Acres and how they take over empty lots, to how neighbors can pull together and make micro loans to expand existing business with Community Sourced Capital to larger community investment strategies.

If you can’t make this meeting (and boy howdy, there are lot of good neighborhood meetings next week), remember you can follow Jackson Commons on Facebook: Jackson Commons Seattle, or Twitter @JacksonCommons.

We’ve got plenty coming up including building a hopscotch from Jackson Street to our friends over on Union Street, Seattle Neighbor Appreciation Day on February 9, another Cake Box event, a February Street Clean, as well as continuing to work to bring new business to Jackson Street! So there’s plenty to do (and we’re looking for folks interested in being on a steering committee).